#cosmologyofgaming

[feralfaro]

OPINION ;; BODY HORROR & THE FATE OF TED FARO

@cosmologyofgaming already wrote a very nice take on Thebes that I didn't want to piggyback on [but still recommend reading, if anyobody takes reading recommendations from a blog named "ted faro apologist"], so here's my own two cents:

Most horror movies centered around creatures [not counting classic monster movies like Godzilla, Shark movies, mummy or werewolf movies where you already have a general idea of what it looks like] really stand and fall with the creature design.

You know it's THERE, you've seen a shape moving in the background, a silhouette or figure in the trees, and there is this sense of dread of what ungodly horror beyond our comprehension might lurk there — and if they don't manage to pull that off, the tension immediately just collapses into itself. [This unfortunatly also appplies to video games in a sense - Bioshock is my favourite game ever but upon finally meeting Fontaine the tension went from 10 to -4]

I always found that HZD wasn't as much of a game that confronted you directly with the horrors it presented, but a game that made you experience the horror that happened by-proxy, through voice recordings and messages of the final hours people lived through, through seeing the carcasses of the swarm frozen in battle with the rusty remains of tanks, though holograms and military sites long abandoned and devoid of life, seemingly frozen in time.

I feel Ted is the same. It's not a direct visual, but the implications that carry so much weight; 1000 years in complete isolation, nobody to talk to but your own, disjointed thoughts as you slide further and further into madness and, both physically and psychologically, lose all sense of self, all sense of humanity, becoming nothing but a bunch of cells driven to stay alive by animalistic instincts.

Seeing the mutation wouldn't have mattered in that sense as it wasn't Ted anymore, except on a biological, DNA related level. "Ted" died when his consciousness and sense of self did, and I feel like seeing and being able to set fire to the thing as the player would bring no satisfaction.

It would be, if anything, more a Cronenberg-eque excursion into body horror than a creature moment.

I would have loved to see the "process" of him becoming immortal having worked with maybe only very minor mutations, [which would have been incredibly impactful considering how vanity is an implied trait for Ted Faro] but his mind just incredibly fractured beyond repair due to guilt and, more importantly, isolation. Seeing Aloy, mistaking her for Lis but not even being able to articulate that as he lost the ability to talk due to a millenia of silence. A man that is still largely self-aware of who he is, of what he is, with animalistic and irrate behaviour, more pitiful than arrogant, a husk — that would have been true horror.

I would have loved to been able to be given a choice at this point in the game -

FIST - kill him. ANGEREY.

HEART - Mercy kill.

BRAIN - Leave him to his fate. It will inevitably sort itself out.

[ I know this would have led to a bit of a clash regarding the entire storyline surrounding the Quen, but while we are at it - I would not mind having had to strangle the CEO with my own bare hands as he was the most insufferable POS that I had the misfurtune to encounter hroughout the entire series. ]

TL:DR;

Being confronted with the mutation and killing it would have brought no satisfaction, neither to the player, nor to Aloy - it's not Ted. It's a bunch of cells. Having been confronted with a still mostly human Ted, who due to loss of speech after 1k years of isolation cannot even talk back or try to justify, a Ted who is utterly lost in his own mind but still largely human and aware of what is happening, aware of how judgement has, finally after a millenia, caught up with him - and the player having to decide if this mess in front of them is even worth killing, or if leaving him to his pitiful existence, knowing too well that he won't survive longer than an hour if he ever sets foot outside of his temple of vainglory, is maybe even a worse fate than death, would have been much more impactful.

#ted faro #horizon forbidden west spoilers #horizon forbidden west #hfw #aloy #horizon zero dawn #hzd #faros tomb #I'm staring off the week with a hot take and i actually might write a Ted POV fanfic thing on this cause i love the idea of it A LOT #meta